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The True Cost of Zombification

Hank Paulson, George W. Bush & Ben Bernanke killed Western capitalism. During the 2008 crash, when the banking system was failing (as is entirely predictable and natural in a hyper-levered house-of-cards economy) they decided to end market-led creative destruction, and institute a system of government-led bailouts, bailouts and bailouts — or, more accurately, uncreative stagnation.

Without the market (i.e. the preferences of people in the economy spending their money) determining what businesses and systems work, those decisions are transferred to central planners and bureaucrats — in this case those who decide who gets bailed out (and who gets state subsidies) and who doesn’t. This means that capital will be allocated to things that people out in the market don’t want or need.

The high debt-acquisition levels necessary to “save the system” necessitate higher taxation, which means that significant quantities of capital — instead of being reinvested into new businesses and ideas — go toward paying down interest on debt. Broadly, because American and Western debt is often owned by Eastern manufacturing nations, this means that productive capital that could be used by Western businesses is being siphoned eastward. So the capital will still get invested, but in businesses in the East.

The money-printing necessary to “save the system” necessitates inflation, which discourages saving and investment and encourages spending on consumption, transferring more capital from Western consumers to Eastern producers.

Just how much debt and money-printing was necessary to “save the system”?

So not only did the bailouts disable creative destruction (the engine of innovation and social progress), they also created so much debt that they have already damaged the ability of future generations to save, invest and innovate.

Worse, they did nothing to address the fundamental fragility of the system. All of that interconnected debt means the system is still fragile to a default cascade, which means that if the system is to be “saved” again, it will require more bailouts and more debt-acquisition, further eroding the ability of taxpayers to save and invest, as governments tax and inflate the currency to pay down the debt.

I expect future generations to look back on this episode as a bizarre aberration. America — surely the greatest producer and innovator in the history of human civilisation — forgot how markets work and the notion of creative destruction, forgot that an empire dependent on hostile partners (i.e. China and the Arab world) is hugely fragile, and then forgot the fact that America emerged as a superpower as a direct result of its status as a great creditor and manufacturer, and that the old European empires lost their superpower status through loss of productivity and massive debt acquisition.

Future historians in the post-American epoch may attribute this bizarre lapse of concentration to a desperate desire for stability, in the wake of the world-shattering events of 9/11. The public and the establishment simply could not face radical change. America got too old, too stubborn, too rich and too established to face the kind of creative destruction that had historically shaped American politics and civilisation. America traded the liberty of creative destruction for the “security” of bailouts, the security-state, and governmental paternalism. As we shall see in the next decade (and contrary to Japan’s experience thus far) this is a totally false security.

11 thoughts on “The True Cost of Zombification”

NATO/IMF/Illuminati took out Qaddafi, Sadam, and now they are leaving Iraq to scare the leadership. I bet Europe and the USA wil be getting cheap oil now. If they don’t pump, the leaders get pumped full of lead.

Low energy costs are the only solution for the USA and Euro debt problems.

I am sure OPEC will be getting a memo soon. “We are desperate. PUMP the oil!”

If you have never watched the movie Max Max 2 (Called Road Warrior in the USA) watch it. A good example when the world collapses.

Weren’t Saddam and Col. Q. the rogues of OPEC? Seems like these two takedowns give Iran and Venezuela more control of OPEC. Now with Iran starting to sabre-rattle Saudi Arabia, it seems like OPEC can divide China and the West which would probably turn China and the US inward. Long-term that may be best for the US but short-term it would force a clash in the US between the entitlement mindset and the liberty-entrepreneurial mindset. At this point I see growing central planning in the US and I expect it would have a 30-year run before it collapses. I’d be happier about my American future if I were 11 than if I were 50.